Helter Skelter
by beanrox
Summary: As always, life happens.  For 100 Prompts Challenge.
1. 001 Immortal

**001.**_ Immortal_

They weren't immortal. They all thought they were, though, even - perhaps especially - the Three.

First as always, Kirk is killed by a damnable bridge, naturally saving the _Enterprise_, even if she isn't his _own_ this around -

then Spock, also saving the _Enterprise_ - but now from herself -

and of course McCoy, ever obstinate to his greatest friends, had the quietest death, fading in sleep back on his own home.

They weren't immortal, but for in the tales of legends.


	2. 002 Sway

**002.** _Sway_

The alien - large, willowy, and a virulent shade of purple - had taken an interest in Chapel early on in the evening.

The rest of the crew that was at that particular bar - a mix of senior crew and middle - had found it anywhere from amusing to tolerable, depending on their tempermants. Chapel had been flattered.

And then his (or was it hers? Xenobiology had never been Christine's strong point) feelers started waving around a little as she drank a little more of her beer. (It was orange. Who made orange beer, really!)

And then the feathery humanoid had laid it's hands on her shoulder.

A little touchy-feely, okay, sure. Some alien species were; some aliens within that species were moreso. Christine ignored the dark look that McCoy gave Spock as the two talked, seated farther down the bar. If he was jealous, well...well, he could shove it!

She was grown. She could flirt if she wanted to, or go home with somebeing if she felt like it. _They_ all did often enough...

And that was all well and good, really, until the aliens' slightly scaley hands started tugging at her arm; it's feelers were waving more urgently now, it's large dinner-plate eyes glossy and dialated.

"Oh, I don't want to dance, thank you.", Chapel said, smiling and gently patting her admirers' claw-like hand, pulling her arm away. Or trying to, at least; it seemed her admirer really didn't want to let go.

Now the purple alien was - humming? Buzzing? And it hadn't let go of her arm, either; in fact, it was gripping tighter, pulling harder, its' scales digging not-comfortably into her skin.

"Oh, no, really - maybe later, dear.", the blonde nurse replied. Christine was starting to be thankful she'd brought along her stun-phaser, really...never leave home without it, her mother had always told her. it seemed she might just have a chance to use it, tonight, too. Good old Mom.

"Listen -", she said, anger and fear charging the woman's voice as she felt herself_ yanked_ out of the bar stool, stumbling on a pair of decidedly non-regulation high heels.

And then - Spock was swaying out of his seat, determined and protective (or was that just her, applying Human feelings onto him?) - and the interloper was five feet away, knocked onto the floor.

"You will refrain from man-handling my co-workers.", was all the nurse heard over the roaring in her ears, and it was all she needed to, really.

That night was the night Christine Chapel fell in love.


	3. 003 Sticks and Stones

**003.** _Sticks and Stones_

"палки и камни.", Chekov laughed, easily. It was rather odd - and probably illegal in ways he wanted to know nothing about - that the kid could hold so much alcohol and not have even a small slur in his voice.

So Leonard is a little confused at what the seventeen year old is spouting out - it sounds Human, but definately not English, and certainly not Standard. Russian, probably, his buzz-fuzzed brain decides, belatedly.

"Whazz'at mean?", the Doctor asks, and Chekov only grins at him - Kirk's now teasing Spock instead of the lanky blonde, and the navigator, and hell, /that's/ always a spectacle to watch.

"Sticks and stones.", Leonard heards from beind him, to the left - he turns a little, and there's Uhura, a bottle of something green in one hand, and a bag of something that vaguely resembled pretzels, if pretzels had been purple.

"Sticks and stones?", he repeated, confused, moving over as the dark skinned shipmate moved to sit down next to him.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones...", she ryhmes, and though the good doctor knows the end, Chekov chimes in with the rest again;

"но слова никогда не будет мне больно."


	4. 004 Museum

**004.** _M__useum_

There exists inside his mind already a museum.

Not really a mausoleum, or a morgue, although Leonard McCoy supposes that's what it really _should_ be, considerin' all that's in that particular wing of his head is a list of the dead he knew, and the memories and thoughts attached to them.

A cousin he'd been close to when they were kids who ended up joining with Starfleet while he himself was starting out in the medicine field; the same cousin who ended up dying when the ambassadorial mission he was on went sour. He'd really liked strawberries, Bones remembers, and their mothers had been close.

Two of his grandmothers' on his pops' side; the third is still alive even though she's the youngest - the oldest was taken by a long-thought-defeated strain of cancer in the winter after he and Joy'd got married, and the grandmam in the middle went in her sleep, who he'd just talked to about coming down to help with the chickens when he was on break the day before.

That museum grows when he reaches Starfleet - a friend from one of his first, basic classes who gets run down by a driver too hopped up on some off-planet drug that was never meant for human consumption in the first place - a teacher who suicides in the middle of his third year, and him and Jim go to their funereal, mournful and quiet and shocked, all of 'em, despite Leo knowin' damn well that sometimes there just ain't any signs before a suicide.

He hopes - once things settle down, once the Enterprise is truly on her way out into the unmapped wilds of their chunk of space - that he might be able to close up that museum.

Bones knows he won't be able to, it comes with the territory, but he can hope all the same, can't he?


End file.
